The Wild Heart (Original Series Part 5)

Prologue: I Think The Heart Broke Long Ago

Friday, February 8, 2019
Santa Monica, California

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"Awesome! Harry is on!"

Stevie Nicks sat in her jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom of her condo near the Santa Monica Pier and used the remote control for the TV she'd had mounted above the tub so she could watch her videos in the morning while she took a bath to turn up the volume. Karen had made the morning Starbucks run, and a very large caramel macchiato, to which she'd become addicted on the On With The Show tour a few years ago, sat at the edge of the tub, almost empty and no longer really hot. The video for Harry Styles' "Sign Of The Times" began to play and she cheered on her surrogate grandson, clapping for him and then and blowing some bubbles from her hand towards the TV screen.

"Just stop your cryin' it's a sign of the times..." Harry sang in his video as he began to fly through the air among the mountains. "Welcome to the final show, hope you're wearing your best clothes...You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky...You look pretty good down here, but you ain't really good...We never learn; we've been here before...Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets...the bullets..."

Not one of her friends understood what Stevie and Mick saw in Harry Styles, but they had become great friends in the past two years, and because he was British and in his twenties, they had declared him their official grandson, the child of the baby they could have had during their brief relationship many years before. He had been to a bunch of Fleetwood Mac shows, including one in London near her sixty-seventh birthday when he'd gone out of his way to bring her a carrot cake...her favorite cake of all. 

Stevie was having a ball singing along and was about halfway through the song when Karen knocked on the half-open door and came in. Stevie, partially covered in bubbles and having known Karen for forty years, did not care if she saw her in the tub.

"My grandson is on!" Stevie smiled and pointed up at the television, but Karen did not smile back. She held and iPad in her hands, the rose gold one she'd bought for Stevie two years ago that she'd refused to have connected, her reading glasses sat atop her dark curls, and she was not smiling. Stevie ignored Karen's serious expression; she was having too much fun to hear whatever Karen had to say. She sang along, 

"Just stop your cryin'; it's a sign of the times...We gotta get away from here, we gotta get away from here...Just stop your cryin'; itll be alright...it's only that the end is near...We gotta get away from here..."

Karen took a deep breath before she spoke. "Stevie...look...I have something to show you, okay, but I want you to remain calm." Karen's expression was fixed and grave.

"Jeez, I really want to see it now!" Stevie said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Is it 'Stevie is a witch' stuff, 'Oh my did Stevie Nicks get fat and old" stuff or 'Lindsey Buckingham is suing Fleetwood Mac' stuff?" Even a year later, saying his name out loud still filled her with sadness, rage, and yes, still warmth and love...but she was hearing his name less these days, and that was almost enough for her not to cry so much anymore.

"Lindsey stuff but not the lawsuit...Stevie, it's bad. I just want to make sure you're okay first."

"Is it worse than him suing Fleetwood Mac for wrongful termination? He didn't get enough of my money when I carried him on my back through the entire early seventies? I fed him, clothed him, housed him, bought him his dope...I should be suing him for reparations!"

The venom in her tone had been intended to hit Karen as strength, a woman taking a stand, but all Karen heard was an almost-seventy-one-year-old woman in a bathtub who still cried herself to sleep until the sun came up every night because she'd lost the love of her life. Karen held out the rose gold iPad with the screen facing Stevie and said, "Stevie...Lindsey had a heart attack yesterday and he just had emergency bypass surgery."